In 1955, sewing clothes in a department store downtown was a very good job, but it was hard, tiring work. Rosa Parks had a job like that. One afternoon she left work and made history.

Rosa Parks was very tired and needed to rest. She got on a bus and paid a dime to ride home. She sat down in one of the empty seats in the middle of the bus. The bus made another stop and a white man got on. He had to stand because the bus was so full. The bus driver did not like this.

The bus driver told Rosa Parks to get out of her seat and go to the back of the bus. In the state of Alabama, it was against the law for black people to sit on a bus while white people stood. Rosa Parks refused to move. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was taken to jail for not giving her seat to a white person.

A lot of black people were not happy about how she was treated. They decided to stop riding the buses. This was the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Rosa Parks was born in 1913 and died in 2005.